Sri Lanka: Food, drinking water and medical aid began trickling down yesterday to welfare centres sheltering over one million homeless Sri Lankans, amid reports that some supplies were being hijacked.
Hopes dimmed of finding more survivors from Sunday's massive tidal waves, as the country's official death toll rose to nearly 22,000. Unofficial estimates put the number dead at over 25,000.
Officials said bloated corpses were still being dragged out from under debris, rivers and lagoons and feared that the final count of those who perished in Sunday's tidal waves would not be known for many days yet.
"The biggest problem we are facing right now is the disposal of dead bodies and co-ordinating the relief efforts to reach the most affected areas," said Mr Migel Bermeo, head of the United Nations' agencies in Colombo.
Reports of measles and diarrhoea were beginning to reach health authorities, causing fears of an epidemic, said Mr Thilak Ranaviraj, the government's top official handling relief efforts.
"The most important thing is the quality of water," he said. Bodies were hurriedly buried, he said, after being photographed and fingerprinted when possible.
The emphasis, however, was shifting from the dead to the living.
Burdened with hundreds of unidentified corpses in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami, the island authorities had waived a law requiring autopsies in order to speed up the burial of decomposing bodies to prevent the outbreak of disease.
"We accept that the deaths were caused by drowning," police spokesman Mr Rienzie Perera said in the capital, Colombo, yesterday.
"We can't strictly follow the old procedures [in disposing of the dead]," Mr Susil Premajayantha, the Minister for Power and Energy, said.
Temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius and stifling humidity of around 70 per cent added to the problem of storing the dead for extended periods.
Meanwhile, bandages, antibiotics, tents and blankets donated by India, France, Russia and other countries were being dispatched to the northeastern and southern coasts, the government's Disaster Management Unit said.
But aid in the island republic, where the minority Tamil Hindus had been fighting the majority Sinhalese for an independent homeland in northern and eastern Sri Lanka since 1983, is not bereft of politics.
Officials in the east said at least four trucks bound for Tamil-dominated areas in the north had been forcefully diverted by a Sinhalese mob and low-ranking government officials to predominantly Sinhalese areas.
Although the federal government in Colombo insists aid was reaching Tamil Tiger rebel territory, also badly hit by the tsunami, the guerrillas accused the government of discrimination and have appealed for direct international aid through their overseas officers.